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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

I’m still in Mt Waverley. I shall not go to Inflation tonight; a decision I bless myself for making.

The important thing is the flat I’ve found. Carol’s to be exact. In Acland St. Therefore very little chance of aid from my mother.

$40 a week. How will I do it? I will do it, I know, but how? I need an initial $400 plus, but I’ll get it somehow.

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Just a brief entry this time. It must have been the era of the wonderful ‘Blitz’ nights at Inflation, where people wore the most preposterous costumes imaginable, danced to Duran Duran and considered themselves very, very cool. Up the stairs I'd go, past the Mick Jagger hologram glowing in the pillar, to sit at a curved bar in the corner and down Crown Lagers until I was brave enough to join the seething masses below. When Inflation comes to mind, the first detail I always recollect is a brief exchange of pleasantries with Siouxie Sioux.

How I made the shift from lousy punk to New Romantic is somewhat of a mystery. The underlying sentiments seem quite different, but the clothes and the excitement were comparable. So there you have it - I was lured by the clothes and the excitement, shallow creature that I was. And not just I; much of the scene of which I was a part was shifting.

It occurs to me also that Inflation was pretty much the first nightclub I and my friends frequented … Though there was that place high up in an office block at 100 Collins St on Wednesday nights – the University Club, I think it was. I used to go with Troy. I remember a beautiful night there with Christine, dancing to Ashes to Ashes …

Before this, it was strictly band venues. And after, more and more clubs: Subterrain, Underground, Chasers, Hardware, Razer. My memory is nowhere near good enough to remember all the names, and when exactly they were at their peak, but certainly the clubs began to take over as social hubs for the freaks of Melbourne.

Carol. Carol Pinx? Carol Pinxt? Who knows what became of her? Her flat in Acland St … I think Cathy Denny may have lived there too. After sound-check at the Ballroom that’s where I’d commonly go to get myself sufficiently drunk to perform.

[Thanks and love to those who've donated. It will make a real difference. I'll be finding out today the true extent of my financial tribulations, but, like the black clouds looming over Melbourne, things do not look bright]